Can we really elect a man who has repeatedly and proudly insulted the looks of women from Miss Universe to Heidi Klum? If the president is setting the example as a body-shamer, then it will be open season on every girl in school and every woman at work. You need to vote!
Words matter. Hillary Clinton pointed that out in the first presidential debate on Sept. 26, and she is so right. Words couldn't matter more when they are uttered by the president of the United States. He or she sets the tone and the example for the entire nation.
If our next president is Donald Trump, then every woman in America needs to be prepared to be a target of body-shaming. That's because Donald Trump has a long and unabashed history of body-shaming women for their looks, as well as insulting them in a variety of other ways.
Hillary rightly brought this up in the debate. After all, females make up 51% of the US population, which means they account for more than half of the vote. Hillary pointed out that Trump has called women "pigs," "slobs," "dogs," "disgusting," and "losers." He was not embarrassed by her words.. In fact, he admitted that he had insulted comedienne Rosie O'Donnell for one, but he gleefully insisted that "everybody would agree that she deserves it and nobody feels bad for her." Really? Tons of horrified debate viewers took to twitter immediately to disagree.
Neither was he embarrassed when Clinton reminded him about former Miss Universe Alicia Machado, who he called "Miss Piggy" because she gained weight after winning the title. Clinton added that he also referred to her as "Miss Housekeeping," because she was a Latina, from Venezuela.
In fact, Trump happily called in to Fox & Friends the next morning after the debate to double down on fat shaming her again. "She was a Miss Universe person, and she was the worst we ever had - the worst, the absolute worst. She gained a massive amount of weight and it was a real problem," he complained.
That's right - the potential next president took time out of his busy schedule to viciously continue his body-shaming attack on Alicia Machado. Machado, by the way, says she was so traumatized by Trump's obsession with her weight when she was Miss Universe, that she ended up in a battle with anorexia and bulimia.
"You know, with 18-year-olds, when you're growing up, that was horrible to me," she recounted on the Today show, on Sept. 28. "My self-esteem (was) on the floor."
Presidents have tremendous power to set an example and if we elect one who revels in insulting women for their looks, it will normalize this same behavior by other men in workplaces, schools and online. In other words, women can expect a tidal wave of body and looks shaming to come their way under a president Donald Trump.
Beware if you're not a "10."
Even if you are, you can't escape Trump's mockery. Trump called out Heidi in August , saying, ' sadly, she's no longer at 10'. Wait, what?
If even Heidi can't measure up to Trump's misogynist standards, what hope is there for regular women? And forget about it for women who he considers rivals.
Trump slammed GOP candidate Carly Fiorina for not being a beauty. "Look at that face, would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president," he said in a Rolling Stone interview.
Of course, he's slammed Hillary Clinton, herself, for not looking "presidential." "Well, I just don't think she has a presidential look," he told ABC's David Muir in early Sept. "You need a presidential look." We can presume that Donald was doing the ultimate body shaming here - implying that Hillary couldn't "look" presidential because she doesn't have a penis.
Women have fought hard in the past decades to make "lookism" unacceptable in the workplace. No CEO in his right mind today would comment negatively on his female employees' looks or bodies. In fact, they could face a lawsuit and potential job loss if they did. Yet, Donald Trump thinks he can hold the highest office in the land with his long history of lookism and his current insults. You need to think about this before you hit the voting booth on Nov 8.
Voters shouldn't be willing to tolerate this behavior in a president when they won't in their bosses! And the victims of Trump's body and looks shaming include some of the most beautiful women in the country, aside from Heidi. He shamed Kim Kardashian in a 2013 interview with Howard Stern. "Does she have a good body? No. Does she have a fat ass? Absolutely. And if it weren't Kim, they'd say 'Wow, I don't want to go out with her.'" Then he attacked her again when she was pregnant with North West. " I think she's gotten a bit large", he complained to Showbiz Tonight.
Uh, yes- that's what happens to women when they get pregnant, Donald!
He called former Desperate Housewives actress, Nicolette Sheridan, a "solid four," on a scale of one to ten. "I liked the way she used to look. A person who is very flat chested is very hard to be a 10." He even took aim at Angelina Jolie. "I don't think she's got a great face. I think her lips are too big, to be honest with you. They look like too big," he told Howard Stern.
When Hillary Clinton talks about Donald Trump not having the temperament to be president, she is usually referring to his quick-to-anger temper and his impulsive decisions. But, I'd say, his loud and proud body and looks shaming of women equally demonstrate that he has not a trace of the temperament that's needed to be president.
And talk about "trickle down." If Donald Trump is elected as the female shamer-in-chief, his sexist attitude will continue to trickle down to tens of millions of men.
As Michelle Obama said in her speech on Sept. 28, "If a candidate regularly and flippantly makes cruel and insulting comments about women... that's who that candidate really is."